


A Beginning (is also an ending)

by DarlingNikki



Series: November Prompts [5]
Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Sharing a Bed, Sharing a Room
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-09
Updated: 2014-11-09
Packaged: 2018-02-24 16:43:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2588780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarlingNikki/pseuds/DarlingNikki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They leave the Titty Twister, and this is their first night afterwards.  They're fragile, they're careful, they're too full of grief to be anything else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Beginning (is also an ending)

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Prompt #6 for my November Prompt challenge, careful. This is more of a disambiguation of the theme, since Seth and Kate are just a little broken and I'm trying to show that in this story.  
> Yeah, I've got more to post tomorrow too, it's late though, and I'm tired. I'll get caught up with editing and posting the stories for 7 & 8 tomorrow hopefully.

“Want some company?”

“Yeah...”

Those words started it all, and carefully, he keeps his eyes focused on the road, and away from the occupied passenger seat. If he doesn't look, nothing has changed. If he doesn't look, he can just pretend Richie's asleep, or watching the landscape roll by. If he looks, it's real. If he looks, if he sees Kate curled up in a tight ball with her tears stained face resting on her dirty knees, then it'll be all too real. If he refuses to look, everything's okay.

Richie had always been the brains of the operation. He was the man with the plan, and Seth had always been content to follow it, to follow him. They were better together. The one plan Seth had tried without Richie there beside him, failed. It failed fucking miserably, and got him five years in the goddamn state pen, and when he finally got out, things weren't the same. Richie had changed. Seth kept trying to ignore it, but something about Richie was sideways by the time he came back.

But Richie's gone now, he ran off with that crazy Santanico bitch, and all the plans of growing fat, growing old on a sunny beach are gone with Richie, gone with the thirty million. Everything from before is left in the dust now. Now all Seth can think of is how to survive, when he feels like he's missing his right fucking arm. It's all down to just damage control now.

He's not sure why he let Kate get in the the car with him. Maybe he doesn't know how to live alone after thirty years of living in his brother's back pocket. Forget the maybe, it was him and Richie against the world since their father's death; he definitely isn't sure how to live without Richie beside him.

But there's no other cars on the road, and it's so easy to press the pas pedal down and just drive down the deserted dusty roads, and just try to concentrate on what's in front of him instead of what was left behind at that godforsaken shithole of a bar. There's nearly a full tank of gas in the car, and even though he hasn't slept in a day, he can just go on. Tomorrow he can worry about what's next. Today he can just drive.

Tomorrow they can get a motel room; tomorrow he can steal what rest he can and regroup. Right now, he just needs space from that hellhole that ruined everything, the farther away the better. Tomorrow will be a new day, maybe shit won't look so goddamn bleak tomorrow.

The road snakes out in front of him, an endless distance that he can focus on to clear his mind. Nothing is the same.

 

* * *

 

“You want some company?”

“Yeah...”

“But not in that.”

“Hello no.”

She asked if he wanted company because her life is destroyed. She's a girl made of the debris and shattered glass of before. Homecoming and sneaking kisses in the church pews are unimportant now. She went through a crucible, and the angel on her shoulder must've left the night her mom decided that life wasn't worth living, because she's all alone in a world she doesn't understand anymore. Academically, she knew bad people existed before, but now she knows there's worse in the big wide world that she'd thought she knew. The sand under her nails, the blood dried crusty on her is a a reminder that the world is an uglier place than her daddy ever taught her about.

Seth never looks over at her. He keeps his eyes focused on the road with a single-minded intensity that disturbs her. She wishes she could focus on something and try to forget.

Daddy's dead, and she killed him. Scott's out there somewhere, a monster running around wearing her annoying little brother's face. Sorrow has found her, and Richie was right she's an open wound trailing blood in her wake.

Tears begin to flow unbidden down her face. She doesn't bother to raise her hand to wipe them away. She's afraid they'd be red like the blood she feels like is leaking from her soul. She wasn't a quiet crier before, she sobbed and screamed until snot ran down her throat suffocating her at her mother's funeral. There won't be a funeral this time. People in Bethel won't know what happened to her family. Her father will have no headstone, will never be laid down beside her mother. She won't ever go back to her hometown. There's too much history there, and she can't go back. The tears cut a silent path through the grime on her face, and she puts her feet in the car's seat and rests her face on her knees and just watches Seth. He was her captor, and now, she doesn't know a word for what they are now. Companion? Fellow survivor? He never looks over at her. This isn't a mistake though, leaving with him. She knows it's not a mistake. It's her way forward.

She thought she was nearly a woman, all grown up, and ready to face the world. She wasn't, but she may be on the way now, knowing sorrow and the fight to survive as she does now. She will always be her father's daughter, but now she will always be a woman that fought to live. Her eyelids begin to droop, the long time since she'd last slept weighing them down, sending her down into the blissful grip of exhausted unconsciousness.

 

* * *

 

Seth starts to see moving black shadows on the road where there are no objects to cast them. It's time to find that place to stop, otherwise he's going to undo all his hard work of keeping himself alive by wrecking the car and killing himself. He didn't survive, only to die by his own hand. He survived...for something, even if he's not sure what right now.

A motel is just ahead, and he slows and pulls into the parking lot, and parks in a back corner. He looks over at Kate, wonders how exactly it came to this. She's not his hostage anymore. She's something else. Maybe what it was that Richie saw in her from the first moment by the pool will be enough to pull him through.

He reaches over and shakes her shoulder. “Wake up, sleepyhead, time to move.”

She groan and hits her knee on the dashboard as she wakes, “Where are we?” She blinks up at him, barely awake, but aware.

“Middle of nowhere, some motel, it's a place to stop for a while.”

“Okay,” she smiles slowly at him and pulls the door handle and gets out. He follows, and she falls in step behind him as he walks to an out of the way door. He looks as the lock for a second, the deadbolt's not done, so he reaches for his wallet and is pleasantly surprised to find it's made it through the night. He pulls out a card, and uses it to jimmy the lock open.

He pushes the door open theatrically and looks over at Kate, who's intently watching his every move. “Here we go, Katie-cakes, home sweet home for the night.” She laughs and walks under his outstretched arm into the room.

“I call dibs on the shower!” She rushes to the bathroom and shuts the door behind her, and Seth's alone again. He walks back to the car and grabs his bag, and the bag that Richie didn't bother to take with him and sits down by the door.

The shower starts, and he begins to take apart his gun, methodically cleaning each part, since the blood from last night seems to have gotten everywhere. He doesn't try for speed. The labyrinth made him do that enough time, reliving the hell his bastard father put him through. The actions are enough to calm him for now.

 

* * *

 

The water isn't really hot when Kate steps into the shower, but she's so sweaty and the dried blood made her skin crawl, so watching the dirt run down her stomach then down the drain, is good. The shampoo in the shower was cheap, she's probably never going to get the tangles out of her hair, but this simple thing, washing clean, makes her feel better. She scrubs roughly at her skin with the wash cloth, and when her skin looks normal, pale and freckled and just her own, she starts to try to run her fingers through the snarls in her hair. She wrings the water out of it, sees it's not clear, then repeats until the water through the drain runs clear.

There's a knock on the bathroom door before it cracks open. “Hey, I thought you might need some clothes,” Seth hesitates, “I can sit them on the counter for you?”

Kate blushes, but stammers out, “Yeah, thanks. I didn't even think about that.” She hears the hinges creak as the door opens further, and she's so very grateful that the shower curtain is thick and she can't be seen. “I'll be out soon.”

“Hope you haven't used up all the hot water.” He shuts the door softly as he leaves.

She doesn't quite feel right anymore, but she's clean at least. It'd be the world's worst cliché to cry in the shower, and Kate's tears have ran out.

 

* * *

 

Seth's staring blankly at the TV set, there's some random telenovella on, but his spanish isn't good enough to follow along. The bathroom door opens and Kate walks out, dressed in one of Richie's left behind undershirts and a pair of sweatpants that she's rolled up the waist of to hold up. Her face is carefully blank, and she doesn't look like she's ready to talk, so Seth brushes past her stripping his ruined suit's coat off his shoulders, into the bathroom.

He showers quickly, mechanically. First he rinses his hair, then his body. The water is turned up as hot as it will go. His skin is red, but the pain is a distraction. He doesn't linger. He pretends he doesn't notice as he begins to cry, softly, so that it can't be heard over the beat of the water on the bathtub's floor. Kate can't hear, he's the strong one, she's just a girl, and he needs to hold himself together.

His knees lock and he falls to the floor. He doesn't bother to get up.

The water falls over him.

_Richie..._

He lies there.

Time passes, he's not sure how long before he pulls himself back together, but he does. He gets up, and turns the water off and gets out of the shower. He stands before the mirror and looks at himself. His eyes trace the nearly invisible scar from a robbery gone wrong, running down his right arm. Richie had stitched him up in a bathroom remarkably similar to this, then. He looks away.

That was the past, this is now.

He examines his face. It looks tired, there's dark circles under his eyes. He pulls his clothes on, a shirt and a pair of briefs, squares his shoulders, and then walks out of the bathroom.

 

* * *

 

That night they fall asleep in separate beds, but at some point Kate wakes up from a nightmare. Seth is tossing and turning and Kate rolls on her side to watch him. He moans, “No,” softly, “please don't go,” and then Kate's blinking back tears. She can hear the heartbreak dripping slowly from each syllable, and it's breaking her heart. She pushes the covers away from herself, and gets up. She slides into the bed behind Seth, and curls up around him. Her face presses into his back, and she just holds him.

He quiets, and she falls back asleep.

She doesn't dream.

**Author's Note:**

> pinkglitterygoth.tumblr.com


End file.
